Help SPS dying for the past 9 months

Maki~R~G~A · Nov 16, 2016

smh254 said:
RO/DI zeroTDS all the time. 15g water change every month.

next time if u saw like that check ur PH and ALK that the major prob on it..

terri_ann · Nov 19, 2016

Should you decide to dose nitrate and/or phosphate....consider dosing both so the tank can reach an equilibrium

bobstir · Nov 19, 2016

i'm surprised no one mentioned this yet, but have you checked for stray voltage? Run out to Home Depot / Lowes and get something like https://www.amazon.com/Multimeters-Analyzers/b?ie=UTF8&node=15707471. What does your tank read? If anything other than 0, a piece of equipment is leaking voltage into your system. This can most certainly result in the symptoms you are seeing.

N4sty T4te · Feb 7, 2017

smh254 said:
Ok so I'm thinking my tank doesn't like me. It seems like this problem happens more when I'm home or have people over. I live in 800sq foot condo. I can see where my pH is lower on the weekends and I can see a drop when I have guest over. I decided to recalibrate my pH probe this morning. Before calibration pH was 7.97 this is low time of the day. After calibration I got 7.70. Could this be the problem?

I know this is an old thread, but I noticed this the other day when I had several people over in a much larger place. I think its the additional co2 in the room from the guests dropping the PH. Crack a window or run a line to the skimmer and see if that helps

Just a theory though.

smh254 · Feb 8, 2017

N4sty T4te said:
I know this is an old thread, but I noticed this the other day when I had several people over in a much larger place. I think its the additional co2 in the room from the guests dropping the PH. Crack a window or run a line to the skimmer and see if that helps Just a theory though.

I've started running a Co2 scrubber on the weekends. This has helped a lot.

terri_ann · Feb 9, 2017

Great to hear smh254! You'll get it all worked out

jackson6745 · Feb 9, 2017

smh254 said:
I've started running a Co2 scrubber on the weekends. This has helped a lot.

During this time of trouble which salt where you using? Red Sea Coral Pro by any chance?

3mm3 · Feb 9, 2017

What would the ammonium in flourish do to corals?

terri_ann · Feb 9, 2017

I have used it with corals 3mm3 without a problem. My systems are large and I have not used it regularly though...always according to directions :0)

terri_ann · Feb 9, 2017

Hi Rich! Have you heard or experienced a problem with RSCP and CO2?

Sending you a pm:9)

smh254 · Feb 10, 2017

jackson6745 said:
During this time of trouble which salt where you using? Red Sea Coral Pro by any chance?

used instant ocean and switch to Red Sea the blue bucket because the parameters are closest to my tank water.

terri_ann · Feb 11, 2017

IMO you will see more improvement switching salt.

jackson6745 · Feb 11, 2017

terri_ann said:
Hi Rich! Have you heard or experienced a problem with RSCP and CO2?

Sending you a pm:9)

Not really with Co2, but I believe the high Alk buffer or maybe something else in the RSCP does this weird damage to SPS. I just don't trust their salt period. I've seen in in person on tanks, and noticed many threads with the same problems and using the same salt. Even experienced previous TOTM winners not being able to keep SPS alive until finally the salt was changed.

smh254 said:
used instant ocean and switch to Red Sea the blue bucket because the parameters are closest to my tank water.

-Did you have the same issues with the instant ocean? Did the tank take a turn for the worse quickly or slowly?

-Either way, I would change salt and do a very large water change. Make sure you are measuring your RODI TDS after the ro membrane but before the di resin (Or get a dual in line meter and measure both). You need to make sure your membrane is good and the DI resin will give you skewed tds readings.

-As for the po4, yes 0.0 is not good but unless you ran an extreme amount of gfo and din't have a bioload/feed, you don't actually have 0.0. I've run stripped systems with very low phosphate like that and the result was a bunch of pale/pastel SPS, not weird tissue recession. With that said, definitely don't run GFO if you believe you are stripped. I am not a big fan of having to dose nutrients into your system. Just add fish and feed if needed. It's a win-win

-What is your lighting and have you changed it between photos when tank was doing well and poorly?

-If all else fails keep mind that you have a 40 gallon system. Sometimes the glass cages that we keep need to be rebooted. Restarting a tank this size with a new sandbed, new water etc... it can turn things around overnight. If you can't fix the issue this is a job that takes a few hours on a small tank and should be considered.